Labor Day report: Florida wage gap widens

File photo: Wages stagnant in Florida

Los Angeles Times

File photo

File photo (Los Angeles Times)

William E. Gibson, Washington Bureau

Working hard but still struggling to get ahead?

That's because most Florida workers can celebrate having jobs after a sluggish economic recovery but are stuck with low or stagnant pay, according to the latest Labor Day report by researchers at Florida International University.

Wages are just inching up for most Florida workers, the researchers found, and women are gradually catching up to the pay scale of men. But the gap between highly paid workers, such as computer programmers, and low-wage workers, such as food servers, is turning into a chasm.

"A growing gap between high and low wage earners means that Florida's workers are living in increasingly separate worlds," the report states.

"This is not good news for Florida's economy because it means that growth will continue to be slow due to a lack of spending money in the pockets of millions of workers."

From 1980 through last year, the median wage in Florida increased at an average annual rate of just 3.4 percent, according to the report.

The income of top wage-earners grew 2.8 times faster than that of low earners during those years. Pay for the highest 25 percent of earners increased at a 5.7 percent pace, while pay for the lowest 25 percent grew by 2.1 percent.

Past reports have focused on widespread unemployment and the state's recovery from recession. But this year's report — "The State of Working Florida 2014" — focuses instead on wage gaps now that the state's unemployment rate has dropped to 6.2 percent, the same as the national average.

"People are just happy to get jobs," said Mason Jackson, CEO of CareerSource Broward, a job placement center in Broward County. "After you are unemployed for six months, there is a kind of stigma, so those folks who are getting jobs are just happy to get back to work."

A surge in tourism has created relatively low-paying hospitality jobs, he said, but a burst of construction has generated jobs with higher pay.

In Central Florida, collective action helped more than 35,000 Walt Disney World workers negotiate contracts that provide a gradual increase in minimum hourly pay to $10 in 2016.

"We worked hard to get this raise," said Laurie Ryder, 48, of Orlando, a housekeeper at a Disney hotel. "Now I won't have to wait three months to go grocery shopping. I'll be able to save up some money to buy a car."

FIU's Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy found some similar bright spots across the state and some changing patterns.

Women's wages grew at a yearly rate of 6 percent between 1980 and 2013, while men's grew by 2 percent. That reduced the disparity between men and women by 31 percent.

"Women have diminished their role in low-wage industries," said Ali Bustamante, a professor of labor studies who wrote the report. He said women have gradually acquired more skills to move into higher-paying professions and have benefited from wage increases for educators.

Despite women's gains, however, a gender gap persists. Men, on average, earned $9,672 more than women.

While women and African-Americans have made significant gains since 1980, many men and Hispanics fell into the ranks of the lowest-paid workers, Bustamante said.

Last year, naturalized citizens earned $1,040 more per year than native citizens, a sign that newly acquired citizenship may be a pathway to prosperity. Bustamante theorized that the naturalization process and qualifications needed to become a citizen tend to favor those who are enterprising and successful.

On the other hand, foreign residents who have not become citizens had much smaller earnings, and one in four is living in poverty.

The highest-paid jobs cited in the report are Internet service providers and data-processing servers, engineers and oil drillers, computer and electronics makers, lawyers and chemical manufacturers.

"Strong and growing wages reflect a strong and growing economy," the FIU report states, "but low wages mean Floridians have less money to spend on food, housing, health care, transportation and many other resources that define their quality of living."